There are different type of constitutions in the world such as written constitution, unwritten constitution, rigid constitution, flexible constitution, parliamentary constitution, presidential constitution. Written constitution is a special written document or group of documents which illustrate what are the most fundamental principles relating to the government whereas unwritten constitution has no written documents delineates the powers of government. A rigid constitution is much that of a written and organized framework for laws such as United States, German, and Japanese constitutions. A flexible constitution is one that may be amended by a simple act of the legislature. In parliamentary system executive is chosen and removed by legislature and there is a head of state with little and no political power. On the other hand, in presidential system there is split between the legislature and executive and there are separately chosen.
Constitution purpose is to constitute rules about what the structure of government should be and what powers it may and may not exercise. W.F. Murphy states that constitution is guardian of fundamental rights ( Allen and Thompson, p.10). It protects people right and let people freely choose their representatives. Moreover, V. Bogdanor (1988) states that the first aim of constitute is to protect people from government, from the danger of a tyranny of the majority in the legislature and the second aim was to protect the people from themselves (Allen and Thompson, p.12).The presence of entrenchment or the lack of entrenchment is a fundamental feature of constitutions. Entrenchment refers to whether the constitution is legally protected from alteration without a procedure of constitutional amendment. United States constitution would be better example of entrenchment constitution. On the other hand, United Kingdom constitution is not entrenched. Moreover, distribution of sovereignty is another purpose of the Constitution. There are three types of distribution of sovereignty: federal, unitary and co-federal. In federal government system, constitution refers the distribution of power between centre and other regions of the state. In unitary constitution sovereignty resides only in the centre of the state such as United Kingdom. In Con-federal there is often dispute to whether so-called "con-federal" states are actually federal. On the other hand, Confederal constitution recognise that sovereignty is located in different provinces rather than centre. , sovereignty is located in peripheral regions and the centre has limited for example, . Another purpose of Constitution is to distributes power between various institutions of government. In and systems of government, ministers are accountable to the who has legal powers to assign or dismiss ministers. The president is accountable to the people in an election. In systems, ministers are accountable to , but it is the who assigns and dismisses them. In parliamentary systems there is a concept of no confidence vote which refers that if the majority of the legislature vote for no motion confidence then government must resign and new government will be announced either parliament will call for new election.
The has an uncodified , which means it is not all contained in a single document. There are several sources of this constitution, some being written down and some not. There is no technical difference between ordinary statutes and law considered "constitutional law". Therefore, the Parliament of the United Kingdom can carry out "constitutional reform" simply by passing Acts of Parliament and thus has the power to change or abolish any written or unwritten element of the constitution. The two most important principles were identified by the constitutional lawyer, as the twin pillars of the constitution which are and (www.justice.org.uk). The most recent key principle is membership, the principle that EU law takes precedence over UK law. Moreover, other important principles are , and , membership. There are other sources of United Kingdom constitution and much of them can be found in written documents or statutes such as Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights, the Act of Settlement and the Parliament Acts (The Daily telegraph, 2008). Therefore, we can say that United Kingdom does have a constitution.
The Constitution is very important because it defines the main outlines of how the state is ruled, the fundamental rights of the citizens, and also defines that the state is a Democracy for example. This makes it the most important of all the laws in a state.
References
Sir john laws, John Alder, Constitutional and administrative law (6th edition palgrave macmillan, 2007), p.6
Tully, John Alder, Constitutional and administrative law (6th edition palgrave macmillan, 2007), p.7
Thomas Paine, Michael Allen and Brain Thompson, Constitutional and administrative law( 9th edition, oxford university press, 2008), p.1
W.F. Murphy, Michael Allen and Brain Thompson, Constitutional and administrative law( 9th edition, oxford university press, 2008), p.10
V. Bogdanor, Michael Allen and Brain Thompson, Constitutional and administrative law( 9th edition, oxford university press, 2008), p.12
A article ‘The Future of The Rule of The Law’
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A article ‘Should the Act of Settlement be scrapped’,
accessed 12 November 2006
